TV Review | Streisand special a nice visit with star who did it her way

Thursday

Nov 30, 2017 at 5:00 AM

By Robert LloydLos Angeles Times

Barbra Streisand, who is simply colossal, has a concert special, “The Music … The Mem’ries ... The Magic!,” on Netflix, which is aiming to become the home of all colossal things.

The title describes the evening pretty well.

The show, filmed nearly a year ago in Miami at the end of a 13-city tour, is a generous, multiple-encore affair. The special — proposed by Streisand’s manager, Marty Erlich-man, who has worked with the 75-year-old performer since she was 19 — aims to highlight the 10 No. 1 albums she has had throughout her six-decade career.

The conceit allows for a number of “deep cuts” — including “Isn’t This Better?” from “Funny Lady,” which Streisand had forgotten singing.

“The Music ... The Mem’ries” — co-directed by Streisand and Jim Gable, who specializes in performance documentaries — is mostly a straight concert film. It has a preamble (Streisand playing cards on a private jet, doing her own stage makeup), an intermission bit (Streisand calling a favorite restaurant to order crab, plus “the fried chicken you have on the kids menu”) and a postlude (Streisand, with husband James Brolin and others, eating said crab, with her fingers).

As divas go, Streisand is something of an urchin, even as she is impossibly divine.

“A few years ago, I went to Lincoln Center for this lovely tribute event,” she says. “I kind of enjoyed it — well, it was a tribute to me.”

Although I find a great many of her recordings of less-than-passing interest — chart-topping, million-selling records, admittedly, but too soft for my taste — Streisand the artist always interests me.

Like any other great artist, she is at the mercy of the character she converts to art. She is complicated and contradictory, a countess from Brooklyn, ethnic and elevated. Her singing is the sound of aspiration, of arrival, of indomitability. It is practiced and it’s punk, it’s tender and ferocious; she can create an impression of great power by getting very quiet. Her diction is impeccable; her accent, unreconstructed.

Because she inhabits a song dramatically — a legacy from her early cabaret and theater training — Streisand never sounds like she’s showing off, even when what she’s doing is technically extraordinary. Her range is like a cello down low and a flute up high.

One begins the evening wondering whether she might have lowered her keys, but you move on quickly; Streisand, who doesn’t squander her voice on frequent appearances, sounds great here.

The camera keeps a close eye on the audience — people of all ages dressed casually or to the nines. Significant looks are exchanged between seat mates, sometimes in slow motion. There are standing ovations aplenty, to which Streisand reacts as if some other response were even possible: “I’m so glad you liked that,” “My gosh,” “Wow, that’s so nice.”

The show as a whole is a little broad, a little schmaltzy. But feminism, environmental consciousness and racial equality get their moments.

“No matter what the color of your skin is or where you were born,” says Streisand toward the evening’s end, “our genetic makeup is 99.9 percent identical to every person on the face of the Earth.... It’s simply a fact that we’re all really just ... ‘people, who need people.’”

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